Khan Al-Khalili

3

He watched as the sun’s rays, reflected in the glass of the upper windows of the apartment blocks opposite his own window, started to disappear, a sign that the sun was setting behind the domes of al-Mu’izz’s Cairo. He looked up at the lofty minaret of the al-Husayn Mosque soaring in splendor over the fine mesh of sunset shadows. Leaning on the windowsill, he looked out on the roofs of the stores in between the apartment blocks and the windows and balconies that overhung the fronts of the buildings and the various alleyways that branched off. He could see fully locked windows and others that were half open. On the balconies housewives were busy collecting the washing or filling pots. By now the street was almost empty of children, as though the approach of nighttime had managed to scare them away. He secretly longed to venture outside, see the sights of the quarter up close, and explore the streets and alleyways, but he had spent so much energy organizing his room that he gave up on the idea. In fact, he usually stayed at home these days; once he arrived back from the ministry, he would only go out once in a while. He decided to postpone his little expedition for a later time. That decided, he left the window and sat cross-legged on his mattress, that being his favorite position for reading. Taking a book from his library shelves he proceeded to read until it was time to go to sleep.

His father, meanwhile, was sitting cross-legged on his prayer mat with the Qur’an open in front of him. He was reciting portions of the text in an audible voice, not paying any attention to the numerous mistakes he kept making in the reading of the text. Akif Effendi Ahmad was in his sixties now; he had a long white beard, and his face had a haggard and august look to it. After he had been pensioned off in the very midst of his working life and with great aspirations for the future, he had imposed a severe isolation upon himself. He seemed to be spending his entire life on devotions and Qur’an recitation. He only left the house on rare occasions, and then it was for a solitary stroll or to visit a particular shrine. The fact that he was financially hard up (his pension amounted to no more than six pounds) was probably primarily responsible for the regulated life he led, but eventually he reconciled himself to his new way of life and fell into its routines; indeed, he even felt grateful and grew to like it. The time that had been most painful for him had been the period after he had been dismissed and pensioned off. He had lost his entire source of income, or almost so, and a life of poverty loomed over his wretched family. He had been forced to leave his work and the activities it involved and to abandon the prestige that came with his position. With that he sprang to his own defense like a madman and started looking for intermediaries who might intercede on his behalf.

However, all that went up in smoke, so he started submitting petition after petition and application after application, but all to no avail. Eventually he came to realize the sad truth, namely that the doors of government employment were now firmly and forever closed. In fact, he had not actually done anything wrong, but his general lassitude and his insolence toward the people who had investigated his conduct only made things that much worse. Once it was all over, all he could talk about was how he had been wronged and who had done it to him, calling down curses on all of them. Anger, hatred, and despair took hold of him, and he started scoffing at government work and civil servants in general. He claimed he had been pensioned off because he refused to do anything corrupt; government jobs were simply too constricting for someone like himself who insisted on keeping his self-respect. At first he had denied that he had been insolent when questioned by the government investigators, but then he turned that round and took pride in it to the point of exaggerating about the way he had behaved. It became his only topic of conversation, to the extent that he became the butt of jokes and started to drive his friends and relatives away.

Initially he maintained his relationships with people he knew; he used to frequent the Gita Café in Ghamra and play backgammon with his friends. But then his misfortunes had a bad effect on his demeanor, and he started becoming more and more intolerant and irascible. One day he lost his temper with someone who was playing backgammon with him. “You can’t talk!” roared the man. “You’ve been fired by the government!” From that day he never went back to the café and retreated from the world and its people. His refuge was the world of religious devotion; there was no longer any trace of the past. What speeded his recovery was the fact that his son Ahmad was able to take on responsibilities for the family, inheriting thereby his father’s obligations and ailments.

At the same time, we should not overlook another key factor in the father’s recovery, namely the role of the mother. When it came to keeping the family content, she possessed a number of estimable qualities. She was a beautiful woman; when she was young, she had attracted the attention of Cairo’s menfolk who clearly admired her looks.

By now she was fifty-five years old, and yet she was still comely and elegant, well made-up and colorful in her choice of dresses. Full-figured and well padded, there was just a touch of flabbiness about her. She knew all there was to know about cosmetics. Above all, she was known everywhere for her sense of humor, her funny stories, and jokes; no other woman came close to her when it came to making friends and telling stories. She had lots of friends, and would spend a lot of time welcoming visitors and visiting people. She would be gladly welcomed into homes by women, married and unmarried alike. That was how it came about that, when her husband’s tragedy struck the house, she was not really affected. When her husband was no longer able to provide her with the things she needed, other hands, those of her female friends, were glad to step in and offer her presents; all of which meant that she was able to keep herself well presented and made-up. She was able to stay one step ahead of her husband too; her gentleness, sense of humor, and optimism all combined to sweep away any residual feelings of sorrow.

“You’re done with the government, Akif Effendi,” she would chuckle, “so now you can concentrate on me!” “If it’s roses you’re after,” she would say as she toyed with his beard, “then you have to water the weeds as well!”

But in spite of it all, she still felt sad when she watched her husband bent over the Qur’an and her eldest boy at his desk.

“Why don’t you both teach me how to read?” she would yell at them, “so I can sit by you.”

The way Ahmad neglected his appearance made her furious. She used to rub her cheeks as though she were about to slap them. “You’ve made your mother feel old,” she yelled in exasperation, “and ruined her reputation! Get your scruffy clothes properly ironed and your beard nicely trimmed. There are all kinds of celebrations going on in the world, and all you do is sit there pouring over those yellowing books of yours. How come you’ve let yourself go bald and your temples turn gray? You’ve made me feel so old, so old!”

Ahmad would smile sarcastically at her. “You can slap your cheeks all you like,” he would reply to aggravate her. “But you’re in your forties, aren’t you?”

The brutal frankness with which he told her the truth horrified her. “Shut your mouth,” she yelled at him, “and watch that insolent tongue of yours! Has any son ever before dared to mention his mother’s actual age?”

For all that, her life was not without its sorrows. She was ill, or at least she thought she was, and yet no one around her showed any sympathy. As the years went by she became convinced that secret powers were at work and the only way she could be cured was through the zar ritual. Many times she had asked her husband for permission to hold such a ceremony, but Ahmad disliked the idea, even though he had no doubts about the existence of such spirits. At the time he could vividly recall his own experiences with the occult, something that had almost driven him mad. The mother had eventually despaired of ever convincing the two men and made do with attending zar rituals at the homes of friends.

One day Ahmad broached the topic. “Truth to tell,” he said in amazement, “our family is a genuine victim of the devil. Didn’t he tempt my father to be so insolent to that dog of an investigator, with the result that he lost his job? Then didn’t he tempt me to learn about magic until I almost went mad? And now here he is harassing my mother, and that’ll end up destroying us all!”

But — God be blessed! — Sitt Dawlat, Ahmad’s mother, managed to show her cheery side more often than the sorrowful one, and judicious use of henna managed to keep strands of gray duly hidden.

Ahmad found he could not concentrate on reading because the change in location made him edgy and nervous. For an hour or so he tried to read in a desultory fashion. The daytime din outside had died down by now, but in its place came an even louder, sharper kind of noise that soon turned the entire quarter into a kind of stage for popular drama like the ones in Rud al-Farag. The source of this din was all the cafés scattered around the quarter, where the radios would be broadcasting songs and stories at full volume; the noise was so loud that it felt as though the radios were in his room. The waiters kept yelling out the orders like tuneful chants: “Black coffee,” “Mint tea,” “More coals,” “Shisha!” Then there was the clicking of the backgammon and domino pieces and the voices of the players.

“I feel as if I’m right in the middle of a street full of passersby,” he told himself, “not in an apartment!” He asked himself in amazement how people in the quarter could possibly stand so much noise or how they ever managed to get any sleep.

He sat there on the mattress until nine o’clock, then stood up to get ready for bed. Turning out the light, he decided to close the windows before getting into bed. Even so, the noise still filled the room and battered his ears. He recalled how quiet the suburb of al-Sakakini had been at this time of night, and that made him regret the move his family had made. He cursed the air raids that had forced them to abandon their nice, quiet neighborhood. At the same time, it all brought to mind that hellish night when the whole of Cairo had been shaken awake; the very memory of it frazzled his nerves, and the whole thing was only made worse by the ongoing din from the street below.

On that terrible night the whole world had been sound asleep; the time was close to dawn. As usually happened in Cairo at such an hour, the sirens had started their dire, intermittent wailing. The entire family had got up; Ahmad turned off the light in the outside hall before going back to bed and his habitual snoring. Before this particular night Cairo had only ever experienced air reconnaissance missions; there had never been any anti-aircraft fire. This time, however, he could not get back to sleep; lifting his head off the pillow he listened with increasing concern. He could clearly hear the whining noise made by the planes; that was obvious enough. But this time it went on and on. There was no let-up; in fact, the noise intensified and came even closer, and that alarmed him. But there was one thought that managed to calm him down: the gap in time between the sirens going off and the noise from the planes was only a minute or so; needless to say, that was not enough for fighter planes to arrive since the usual interval in such cases was at least fifteen minutes. On that basis he assumed the planes were British; they were circling overhead to launch an attack. He waited for the noise to stop, but it went on and on, getting louder all the time; it almost felt as if the planes had selected their house as a focal point for their circling. The din was totally nerve-wracking.

He got up again, left his room and felt his way slowly in the dark toward his parents’ room.

“Are you both awake?” he asked when he reached the doorway.

“We haven’t managed to get any sleep yet,” his mother replied. “Did you hear something?”

“Yes, planes buzzing overhead. I heard them as soon as the sirens went off.”

“They’re probably British,” said his father.

“Could be,” Ahmad replied.

After sharing this opinion with his father he decided to go back to his own room. But before he had even made it back to his bed, his entire room was lit up by an incredibly bright light in the sky. It was followed by a horrible screeching sound and loud explosion that reverberated across the city of Cairo. In a panic he leapt out of bed again and, heedless of everything else, rushed toward the door like a madman. What made him panic even more were the bright bomb flares that were still lighting up his room; they managed to penetrate through the windows all the way into the interior of the room as though to direct the bombs right toward their intended targets. There now followed a whole string of powerful bomb blasts, each one preceded by that dreadful screeching noise. The ground shook, and the whole house kept rattling. The bombs kept falling one after the other, as though a fit of overweaning obstinacy was causing the sky to maintain this fiendish barrage.

He found his parents in the lounge, his father’s arm wrapped around his mother; he looked as though he was about to collapse from sheer panic. Ahmad rushed over to them and grabbed his father by the arm.

“Come on,” he yelled, “let’s go down to the bomb shelter.”

They hurried downstairs, preceded by the servant.

“What’s that bright light?” his father asked in a quaking voice. “Is there a fire outside?”

Ahmad was busy trying to control his own breathing and make out the staircase steps in the dark. “They’re magnesium flares,” he said, “the ones we’ve been reading about in the newspapers.”

“God protect us!” his father replied.

The stairwell was crowded with people making their way downstairs, praying to God with fearful hearts as they did so. With each explosion the walls shook. That would be followed by deafening screams from the women and crying from the children. All of a sudden the flares went out and the bombing stopped; the deadly rain of bombs came to an end, and everywhere was dark. All sorts of chaos ensued as people kept slipping and bumping into each other. Everyone started to panic. Eventually after a good deal of effort they reached the shelter in the basement; it was lit by a dim lamp, and the windows were all covered with a thick, black cloth. The ceiling rested on horizontal beams and vertical steel pillars. There were piles of sand all around. In the faint glow of the lamp you could glimpse people’s faces, their expressions as pale as death itself; eyes agog, limbs aquiver, and tongues raving. The three of them stood there huddled close together, craving for a single moment of release so that they could catch their breath. But the pounding had gone on and on; in fact, it had intensified and seemed to be coming even closer to where they were.

At this point Ahmad’s distress at the memory of what had happened that night was so strong that he had to move his legs around in the bed. “What a lousy night that was!” he muttered to himself. With a deep sigh he opened his eyes. The din in the street below once again impinged upon his consciousness. He recalled that, going to bed, his intent had been to sleep, not to relive the worst night in his life. But now that was exactly what was happening, and the way the memories kept flooding back was irresistible. Yes, indeed, the bombing had come even closer; in fact, one bomb had landed so close that everyone imagined that it had actually exploded inside their very hearts and minds. They all raised their hands as though to protect themselves in case the ceiling fell in on them. There was more screaming and praying; the word “God” was on everyone’s lips. Everyone started to imagine that the next bomb would fall directly on top of them. The next bomb did indeed fall. Good God, how can anyone possibly forget that awful screeching sound — the screech of death itself — as it made its inexorable way in their direction; how the entire building had shaken and the windows had rattled before it actually landed. There had been a huge explosion, at which everything had been shattered — hearing, nerves, breathing; backs bowed in anticipation of the inevitable, total despair; everyone preferred to die instantly rather than endure the long wait for its arrival. Yes indeed, at this point all that separated them from death was a single bomb that might be leaving its slot inside the airplane at that very moment. But the bomb had never come — at this point he allowed himself a sorrowful smile; either that or else it fell somewhere else far away. The sound of explosions receded just as quickly as it had come. This time death did not come the way they had imagined it would; it had showed them its face but did not give them a taste of its impact, at least not until some other night. The explosions moved off and the noise diminished, then became intermittent, then stopped. All that was left was the sound of gunfire, then everything fell silent.

At this point everyone recovered their breath and stared at each other in a mixture of doubt and hope. Suddenly people recovered the power of speech and started raving like madmen. A hellish quarter of an hour went by before the all-clear siren sounded. For God’s mercy! Had death really passed them by? Would they really see the light of a new day? People started moving, lights were put on, and everyone headed for the outside where they found other people coming from neighboring quarters. Stories started doing the rounds: Abbasiya was in ruins, you could kiss Misr al-Gadida good-bye, and Qasr al-Nil was a pile of rubble. The trolley depot had been hit, and there were piles of workers’ bodies all around.

As Ahmad and his parents made their way back upstairs to the apartment, they all felt a tense exultation, the kind of feeling people have when they have just managed to escape death and yet their hearts remain in the clutches of fear’s sharp claws. They spent the rest of the night awake and talking to each other. Next morning the entire quarter looked as though everyone had made up their minds to leave; trucks were carrying all essential property to other quarters which people considered safer or else to villages close to the capital city. Whole buildings emptied of their occupants, and the sight of this mass emigration made the family feel even more worried, particularly Ahmad’s father whose weak heart had already been badly affected by the air raid. The notion of leaving the quarter along with everyone else took root inside him. Already influenced by Islamic propaganda, he was firmly convinced that air raids would never target a religious quarter like al-Husayn. He had conducted a thorough investigation that resulted in finding this particular apartment. Even if he managed to forget the move itself, there was no way he would ever forget the day after the air raid. The whole of Cairo could talk about nothing else; everyone engaged in nervous chatter and their laughter was a blend of happy release and fearful tension.

As far as Ahmad was concerned, this time death seemed to have been so close that he could feel its breath on his face. And there were fates even worse than death: being abandoned in the middle of the road limbless and with a severed head, for example; or perhaps become permanently disabled; or to survive death but have the house and all its contents destroyed. He and the family would have nowhere to live, no furniture and no clothes either. He started praying to his Lord and begging his Prophet to intercede. His life may have been miserable and frustrating, but it was still one that he wanted to live. Even more remarkable was the fact that he now started coddling himself a bit and making his way of life as enjoyable as he could. Suppressing his natural instincts, he bought a box of chocolate biscuits on his way home, something that he had long craved but had deprived himself of, instead putting the sum into a savings account regularly each month. But with the arrival of evening the entire family was feeling anxious and unhappy; everyone was still jumpy, and no one slept a wink. Memories of that horrendous night came back to haunt them, and everyone’s senses were on edge. Every single siren that went off, every door slam became a bomb blast; every rustle the screech of an airplane.

Now they had moved. Even so, did they feel any safer in their new location? The apartment blocks were newly constructed and sturdy; they all had bomb shelters that were models of their kind, and it was in the al-Husayn neighborhood. But then, castles could fall and mosques be destroyed! Oh my, how often we find ourselves being tortured by our love of life, and done to death by fear! But, when all is said and done, death knows no mercy. Merely thinking about it turns anything noble into mere trivia.

How often had Ahmad endured feelings of sorrow and anger that were almost intolerable? And why? With that thought he heard the radio announcing the royal good-night and realized that he had lain there awake and fearful for a good two hours. That worried him, and he started putting such thoughts aside in a quest for some sleep. But he failed, and instead the thoughts took over. He found himself inundated with this flood of memories. He recalled how he had suggested to his parents that they move to Asyut where his younger brother worked and they could be really far away from danger.

“No,” his mother had told him, “we’re going to stay near you. Either we stay together, or else.…” And with that she had chuckled and asked for God’s protection.

He wondered what he would be doing now if his parents had moved south. The best solution would have been to live in a pension. Truth to tell, he would have welcomed the idea, because, although he wasn’t aware of it himself, he relished change. How could it be otherwise when he was still a bachelor, someone who had spent forty years living in a single house and enduring a routine that never changed from one day or year to the next and left him with a devastating sense of isolation? However inured he was to such an existence, something deep inside him was bound to push him toward change, even if he himself was not aware of it; it would need to be a complete change at that.

On this occasion, however, he did not completely surrender to his thoughts because a strange smell managed to bring his dreams to a grinding halt; it penetrated his nostrils as though carried by some previously dormant breeze. What made him aware of it was that he had never smelled anything like it before. He could not describe it: neither sweet-smelling nor foul, yet pleasant. There was a serenity and depth about it, allowing it to penetrate to the very core of his senses. For a while it would disappear, only to come back again. Were people really burning incense at this hour of the night? Or was it that this strange new quarter possessed its own particular scents that hovered over the depths of the night’s silence?

All this made him forget his previous thoughts. Without even being aware of it he started to doze off and, before very long, slumber invaded his eyelids and closed them tight.